Maternal and Child Health

Overview

Evidence is mounting that a person’s health at conception, during gestation, and throughout their early years impacts their health throughout life. Clinically-informed research that aims to understand more about the health of the mother, developing baby and child is a transformative approach to preventing disease, reducing disability and improving outcomes.

The collective vision of this theme is to address major clinical problems facing pregnant women, the developing foetus, infants and children through a discovery-care continuum in maternal and child health for improved health outcomes. Such issues include: pregnancy and birth complications; early life exposures that lead to chronic disease in children; and improved methods of delivering clinical service and health care. Our research places an emphasis on promoting a healthy start to life for all children thus reducing the need for hospitalization and preventing long term health problems.

Aims

This theme aims to improve maternal and child health care by:

Establishing a Maternal and Child Health Network (MCH Network) that will drive research collaboration within clinical services and integrate innovative research with education and training. Individual BDHP partners within the MCH Network have initiatives already in place to drive research collaboration and clinical integration for improved research translation.

The MCH Network will provide a framework to expand these initiatives to benefit all organisations within the network. It will drive innovation and transformation across BHDP and meet its tripartite mission by linking the activities of its members, creating opportunities to share facilities and resources, encouraging knowledge sharing and research collaboration, and by contributing to clinical and research training initiatives.